Wireless networks are becoming increasingly more prevalent. For example, individuals and businesses today use wireless devices to communicate with one another, access the internet, and to send and receive data. A wide variety of content is available to user devices over wireless networks including Web pages and rich streaming multimedia content.
Virtually all wireless service providers today support both voice and data communication. Exemplary service providers include Verizon Wireless, Cingular Wireless, T-Mobile, and Sprint Nextel. There are various types of wireless networks that currently exist and future network technologies are continually emerging (e.g., CDMA2000, GSM/GPRS, GPRS/CSD, UMTS, HSDPA, and Wi-Fi). Some wireless devices are able to switch between different types of wireless networks having different network connectivity attributes (bandwidth, protocols, etc). For instance, certain wireless devices are capable of switching between GSM EDGE networks, 3G networks and Wi-Fi networks.
Along with the growing use of wireless networks to transfer data to user devices, richer content is being made available such as video and various types of streaming multimedia content. Content today may not only consist of a large amount of data, thus requiring a significant bandwidth for satisfactory transmission, but may also be time-sensitive. If inadequate bandwidth is available for certain types of content such as streaming video, the user experience may be unsatisfactory because of delays or choppiness of the video stream. This problem is compounded as devices switch between networks of different types having different bandwidth capabilities. As a result, network characteristics during a network switch may negatively affect the satisfactory transmission of such content.
Additionally, data-rich content may introduce problems relating to user device attributes. For example, streaming content consumes device storage space and battery life at a faster rate than other types of content. Moreover, data rich content can also have an impact on the cost associated with operating wireless devices. For example, the rate of service for some devices may be dependent upon the amount of data transferred, as is often the case with GPRS devices. The rate of service may also be dependent upon connection time, as in Circuit Switched Data (CSD) connections.
While it is known in the art to compress content based on available bandwidth, services are not currently compressing content dynamically on a per device basis based on detected device and network connectivity attributes.